


Silent Night

by posingasme



Series: Supernatural Fatherhood [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Christmas, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Physical Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:34:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21636703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/posingasme/pseuds/posingasme
Summary: The first rule of being a Winchester is that they do what they do, and they shut up about it. The second rule is something about venting in spurts of violence and alcoholism. Christmas is just any other day, and the rules still apply.
Series: Supernatural Fatherhood [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1049696
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	Silent Night

For Sam Winchester, it wasn't Christmas until his father had thrown a punch. 

When he was seven, it had been the neighbor down the hall at the motel in Cleveland, throwing the loud party, who told John to piss off when he asked them to keep it down. 

When he was nine, it was the idiot who had tried to steal Dean's gun at the hostel in Maine. 

At twelve, he had to apologize to the carolers who had the misfortune of encountering John on the way through the motel parking lot after a hunt in Nevada. It being sixty-four degrees out, Sam really couldn't blame the man for forgetting it was Christmas. 

On his thirteenth Christmas, John had told Bobby where he could put his parenting advice, and that was the last holiday they had spent in South Dakota. 

On his fifteenth, John and Dean had both gotten trashed on eggnog, and Sam had been forced to break up an increasingly dangerous game of poker. 

When he was sixteen, they were all fighting a pack of ghouls, and none of them had felt much like celebrating anything other than a shower. 

And when he was seventeen, it was finally Sam himself who received the slam in the face. 

It was like being hit by a sledgehammer. He had seen monsters take that punch, from that large fist, and thought he knew how powerful it was, but he had no idea until he felt the full brunt of it himself. His vision blurred and his knees betrayed him, let him fall to the ground in a crash. 

“Hey! What’s going on-”

“You stay out of this!” John bellowed.

Dean had looked so torn, so heartbroken when his vision cleared, that Sam wanted to laugh. Stone-cold big brother, badass hunter, and Dean looked like he was about to burst into tears at any moment. Panicking the way he never would during a hunt. Considering disobeying his father the way he never would during a hunt. “Dad-”

“Go pack your bags. We’re leaving. Tonight.”

“You okay, Sammy?”

He swallowed, and realized he could taste blood. His tongue searched frantically, and found all teeth accounted for. The blood was from the inside of his cheek, where his teeth and John’s knuckles had smashed the flesh, but the teeth were there. That was good. That was fine. “I’m fine,” he panted. He hoped Dean would follow their unspoken rule about not mentioning the tears aloud, so they could all pretend he wasn’t crying. That was the way they were supposed to do it. That was the way they could all look one another in the eyes later, when tempers had died down. Pretend not to see the tears, and it was like it never happened.

Dean was twenty. He would be twenty-one in less than four weeks. But at that moment, he looked ten at most, staring down at his brother with wide eyes. 

“Pack your bags. And make sure you’ve got the silver rounds we started last night. Don’t want all that work getting left behind. Now, Dean.”

But Sam was trying to stand, and Dean couldn’t help himself. He grabbed his little brother’s arm and lifted, and then steadied him when he was on his feet. “Get off me,” Sam sobbed. “I said I’m fine.”

“Follow orders, son!” John growled.

Dean backed away from them both, and hurried into the adjacent room to do as he was told, with a choked, “Yes, sir.” 

Yes, sir. 

The words hung in the air between Sam and his father. It was the obedience that Sam had neglected to show. Sam just couldn’t do it like Dean did, not all the time. He wasn’t the good son. He never had been. He had always questioned every order, at least in his head, when Dean could stare him down enough to keep him quiet. Why were they doing this? Why were they different from all the other kids at every school? Where did Dad go when he left for days at a time? Why did he come back with bruises and bloody bandages? Later, the questions changed, but they didn’t stop. Why did they go looking for monsters, when everyone else ran away from them? Why wouldn’t John stop at a motel some nights, and insisted on driving non-stop and then hunting on no sleep? Where were they going now? How could John be certain salt worked against all kinds of ghosts? If burning bones usually fixed the problem, why did they also salt the bones when they could? If there were other hunters out there, why didn’t Sam and Dean ever get to see them too? What was the big deal about being inside by dark if they knew how to defend themselves, especially if John wasn’t even going to be there? If there were bad guys, why weren’t there also good guys? What was Yellow-Eyes, and why was John still obsessed after all these years? Finding Yellow-Eyes wasn’t going to bring Mary back, was it?

Sam stalked toward the kitchen sink and spat. Blood smeared the porcelain. He gripped the side of the sink. He was shaking badly, and he didn’t trust his legs to hold him. He had his tears under control. Snapping at Dean had helped with that. Falling would be too humiliating now.

“Let me see it.”

“I’m fine.”

“I said let me see-”

“And I said I’m fine!” he shouted again. Then the blood collected in his throat gagged him, and he turned to spit again. He willed himself not to throw up. Even for him, this level of defiance was rare. It was turning his stomach as much as swallowing the blood did.

John’s hands were on him then, turning him firmly to face him.

Sam’s shaking stilled in an instant. He froze cold before his father, and could do nothing but stare.

But he knew the rule. He didn’t mention the tears they both knew were on John’s cheeks. 

The large hands examined him with a strength which was familiar, and with a tenderness which wasn’t. He watched his father’s red eyes as they inspected Sam’s wound. He took a deep breath. “You’ll change your mind,” he said quietly.

Sam pushed away. “I won’t. This is what I want. And you and Dean are just going to have to respect that.”

John’s eyes flashed with anger, but also sparkled with fresh tears. “I’m sorry I hit you, Sammy. I shouldn’t have done that. We’ll talk about this again another day.”

“There’s nothing to talk about, Dad. Decision is made.”

“You’ve got a whole year, and a half. You’ll change your mind.”

Sam shook his head again, but he did not answer, and simply glared past his father. 

Dean leaned against the far wall and dragged his trembling hand down his face. His bag was packed. The good son, always ready in mere minutes. He was staring back at Sam, with pleading in his face, silently begging Sam to change his mind, to not follow through on his plans to leave them. 

He closed his eyes to block out Dean’s. “Merry Christmas, Dad,” he muttered, and he pushed past them both to collect his own backpack. Behind him, he could hear John snapping at Dean about silver bullets, while a car radio through the open window played Silver Bells.


End file.
